Does anyone happen to know which Android emulators (other than AMIDuOS) allows direct in-app access to Windows folders?
In other words, an Android book reader app say, or a photo editor can access the Windows folders where the files are stored directly without having to copy the files to a special Shared Folder as is the case with Bluestacks and others.
As mentioned, AMIDuOS is the only one I know of that has this option in its configuration tool where you specify which Windows folders to look in for Pictures, Music, Video etc. Sadly, this emulator has been obsolete since 2016 and has no up-to-date graphics driver support. I'm still using it on my HP Tablet but I have to keep rolling the graphics driver back to an old version otherwise it stops working.
Trevor
The only Android emulators I use are for app development (e.g. Android Studio and in the past Genymotion) and those probably won't fit the bill for you as I don't think they provide Windows file access.
Have you tried any in this review:
https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-emulators-for-pc-655308/ . That lists around 15 emulators.
I think I've tried them all. It seems odd that only the one emulator would have this option.
Even Bluestacks? I've not used it but I found a link (
https://www.business2community.com/instagram/post-instagram-computer-02013790) that implies there's a "Pick from Windows" option for accessing files.
You'd think it would be a standard feature. Beats me why American Megatrends would have bothered including it when none of the others think it's worth bothering with.
Not even Bluestacks. The "Pick from Windows" option you mention is something they call a Media Manager which allows a user to choose one file at a time (at least on Bluestacks 5 beta) and copy it to a shared folder under Bluestacks. So it's recognised that users will want to access files stored in Windows folders. The next step is to allow apps to access them directly without the need to make a duplicate copy.
I asked Bluestacks about making this happen. They said they would pass the request for the feature along to their development team. Then they gave me a long explanation about how difficult it was likening it to "one PC sharing the files and folders on another". Maybe I'm missing something. Almost all emulators are aimed at gamers so maybe this is something they don't want or need. What I've always liked about AMIDuOS is that it looks and works just like a Jelly Bean or Lollipop (the latest versions they supported) Android tablet and all my photos, videos, documents are all accessible just like any other Windows app.
Well, pure speculation here: Google have been taking tighter and tighter control over Android in later releases. Somewhere around Android 6 (Marshmallow) they more or less banned file access across apps, and later releases have tightened security further. Other non-security restrictions include what an app can do in the background. Having developed a few apps, I know that each new release of Android means further debugging to find out what they've just broken.
While the basic Android is Open Source, if you want to use any Google features (including the app store) then you have to conform to Google licensing.
I just wonder if the later versions of Android make break-out to the Windows file system problematic because of Google's security rules.
